ResidentAlien
Member
I'm just an old man yelling at the clouds. I expected a bit more from Cadillac. Maybe I shouldn't have?
Hit the 4,400 mile mark on the 2025 V (non-BW) a few weeks ago, and knew was getting close to the 12 month point of taking it to the dealership for Cadillac's Complimentary 1st Service visit. PITA, but with the price of oil lately...why not? So I made an online appointment and got it confirmed. 8AM, first appointment of the day.
Now, admittedly, this is the first time since GM started all this nonsense about trying to force people to take their cars into a Caddy dealer for service that we had to go find a specific Cadillac dealership. There are two, about an hour drive in either direction. When we had the 2020 CT5-V, the local Chevy/Caddy dealership we bought it from dropped selling Caddy after GM said they had to upgrade their dealership if they wanted to keep Cadillac sales. They opted out. But since we bought it there, they kept servicing the vehicle.
Fast forward to service day and we get there at 7:45. Waited a few minutes and they finally allowed us in to the drop off section. Um, sorry, we're not open yet but your advisor will be with you in a few minutes. We meandered around the showroom by ourselves and some rando not in any sort of uniform comes up and asked us if that was our car (pointing to it). Yes it was. Can I have the key? Well, no, I don't know who the f**k you are dude. He leaves, comes back a couple minutes later with the service advisor, who asks why we were dropping the car off. WTF? I tell her, she's ok with it, and asks for the key, introducing the dude to us and all that. Then after he leaves she says it should only be about an hour and a half. Ok, we can deal with that. She shows us to the lounge and refreshment area and leaves us to it. There was a window in the door area we could look out into the service bay. About 8:30 or so, I peeked out there and didn't see our car. I pulled up the app to locate it and it's in the back parking lot. It stayed there until nearly 9:30 before it moved to the bay. They do their thing, oil change, tire rotation, mult-point inspection. I didn't misunderstand her when she said an hour and a half. That was my expectation when they would be done. Then, right about 11 am or so, I went to peek at the car again. It's now sitting near the door hooked up to some machine periodically flashing the parking lights.
We hunt down the service advisor and ask what now? She's not sure. Has to go check. Comes back and says there's an update that needs doing and should only take about 45 minutes longer...that would have been nice to know. Do the techs even talk to the advisors if there's issues?
All that and we're right about noon of getting wrapped up and out of there. I was afraid the service advisor was going to start breaking for lunch before we did. The car was washed 2 days before service, as we always keep it pretty clean. Oh, but no. They had to spend MORE time washing the car again.
I hope this is an exception and not the rule. I mean, the entire idea of an appointment is to be able to get your place in line and typically first of the day is a great place to be. COMMUNICATIONS go a long way. No reason given for the delays, or updates, or anything [it was a telemetrics recall thing for the update]. It was almost a "we have your car, now you go over there, shut up, sit down, and we'll let you know when it's done" situation. To which I have never had this kind of attitude at any appointment I've made prior. Even doctor offices. And if they had to perform more service to save the patient, that's fine, but could you come and TELL me that?
Service was fine. They even sent me a video of them checking the brake pad thickness. That was nice. The communications part absolutely SUCKED. Although, the dealership was clean, neat, and modern-looking.
I understand now that GM has painted itself in a corner with Cadillac dealerships, that they're acting as if they're the only game in town, and can do whatever they want and you as the customer just have to suck it up. They purposely make Cadillac dealers sparse outside of larger metro areas. But you would think if they wanted to be exclusive, they should ACT exclusive and step up the quality of the customer relations end of that.
As such, for the first time, I didn't lie filling out the Cadillac survey. I gave them less than perfect marks where they didn't meet expectations, and explained exactly why I felt like they were treating us like they were servicing an old Ford Escort instead of a Cadillac. If that's how they want to present on the first service call, what makes them think I want to come back to them?
Hit the 4,400 mile mark on the 2025 V (non-BW) a few weeks ago, and knew was getting close to the 12 month point of taking it to the dealership for Cadillac's Complimentary 1st Service visit. PITA, but with the price of oil lately...why not? So I made an online appointment and got it confirmed. 8AM, first appointment of the day.
Now, admittedly, this is the first time since GM started all this nonsense about trying to force people to take their cars into a Caddy dealer for service that we had to go find a specific Cadillac dealership. There are two, about an hour drive in either direction. When we had the 2020 CT5-V, the local Chevy/Caddy dealership we bought it from dropped selling Caddy after GM said they had to upgrade their dealership if they wanted to keep Cadillac sales. They opted out. But since we bought it there, they kept servicing the vehicle.
Fast forward to service day and we get there at 7:45. Waited a few minutes and they finally allowed us in to the drop off section. Um, sorry, we're not open yet but your advisor will be with you in a few minutes. We meandered around the showroom by ourselves and some rando not in any sort of uniform comes up and asked us if that was our car (pointing to it). Yes it was. Can I have the key? Well, no, I don't know who the f**k you are dude. He leaves, comes back a couple minutes later with the service advisor, who asks why we were dropping the car off. WTF? I tell her, she's ok with it, and asks for the key, introducing the dude to us and all that. Then after he leaves she says it should only be about an hour and a half. Ok, we can deal with that. She shows us to the lounge and refreshment area and leaves us to it. There was a window in the door area we could look out into the service bay. About 8:30 or so, I peeked out there and didn't see our car. I pulled up the app to locate it and it's in the back parking lot. It stayed there until nearly 9:30 before it moved to the bay. They do their thing, oil change, tire rotation, mult-point inspection. I didn't misunderstand her when she said an hour and a half. That was my expectation when they would be done. Then, right about 11 am or so, I went to peek at the car again. It's now sitting near the door hooked up to some machine periodically flashing the parking lights.
We hunt down the service advisor and ask what now? She's not sure. Has to go check. Comes back and says there's an update that needs doing and should only take about 45 minutes longer...that would have been nice to know. Do the techs even talk to the advisors if there's issues?
All that and we're right about noon of getting wrapped up and out of there. I was afraid the service advisor was going to start breaking for lunch before we did. The car was washed 2 days before service, as we always keep it pretty clean. Oh, but no. They had to spend MORE time washing the car again.
I hope this is an exception and not the rule. I mean, the entire idea of an appointment is to be able to get your place in line and typically first of the day is a great place to be. COMMUNICATIONS go a long way. No reason given for the delays, or updates, or anything [it was a telemetrics recall thing for the update]. It was almost a "we have your car, now you go over there, shut up, sit down, and we'll let you know when it's done" situation. To which I have never had this kind of attitude at any appointment I've made prior. Even doctor offices. And if they had to perform more service to save the patient, that's fine, but could you come and TELL me that?
Service was fine. They even sent me a video of them checking the brake pad thickness. That was nice. The communications part absolutely SUCKED. Although, the dealership was clean, neat, and modern-looking.
I understand now that GM has painted itself in a corner with Cadillac dealerships, that they're acting as if they're the only game in town, and can do whatever they want and you as the customer just have to suck it up. They purposely make Cadillac dealers sparse outside of larger metro areas. But you would think if they wanted to be exclusive, they should ACT exclusive and step up the quality of the customer relations end of that.
As such, for the first time, I didn't lie filling out the Cadillac survey. I gave them less than perfect marks where they didn't meet expectations, and explained exactly why I felt like they were treating us like they were servicing an old Ford Escort instead of a Cadillac. If that's how they want to present on the first service call, what makes them think I want to come back to them?
